I don’t have much sympathy for the writers. I really don’t get the royalty thing at all. It is only a tradition that they are paid royalties. Why shouldn’t they be hourly like anyone else? Why shouldn’t the plumber get a commission every time his pipe is used in a restaurant that makes the owners rich? The real problem is once again copyright. Nobody should be making any money at all off of these ancient TV shows. Especially such things as “I Love Lucy”. They should be in the public domain by now. I think writers should be paid and run their business the same way we pay consultants in the IT industry: Pay them by the hour and pay them more generously than you would an on-staff IT person. A consultant might charge $150/hr which is potentially around triple what an on-staff guy might get. Why do they get so much? To cover all of the overhead of having to run their own business and to get them through the dry spells while they do the leg-work to line up their next gig. Not only would this make more sense but it would prevent them from losing money and their jobs on costly strikes such as this one.

Fortunately for us, writers are not plumbers. A plumber who creates a proprietary plumbing system from his creative mind might be worth his weight in lead (pun intended), but writers are something different. Everyone complains because the current content is below-average – ordinary. A plumber’s work gets the job done.

Think of a writer like a novelist. They are making a creative piece to entertain others. If their revenue venue dries up, they have no incentive to create. Likewise, if others in their industry make more profit than they do as a matter of standard, they may likely change venues. A novelist writer can negotiate with a publisher their work. Why not screenwriters?

Look at what is happening. The studios, who make the majority of the profit on the writers’ work are suffering under horrible ratings. Obviously they are worth their weight in gold and are making a very, very good point. I for one have had two of my favorite seasons all but cancelled due to this. There is simply nothing on worth watching; ie, studios’ ratings plummet.

I have great sympathy for them. Unless they take action the studios will continue to profit in a changing environment that has all but left them out unless they try to adapt along with the studios.